LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Vietnam: Vietnam Trade
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The early history of Vietnam is that of Tonkin, Annam, and Cochin China. The first Europeans to arrive were the Portuguese in 1535. Dutch, French, and English traders came in the 17th cent., at which time missionaries entered the area, winning many converts to Roman Catholicism. The persecution of missionaries and of their Vietnamese converts by the ruler of Vietnam was a factor prompting French conquest in the 19th cent. The French captured Saigon in 1859, and after a period of warfare, organized (1867) the colony of Cochin China. In 1884, France declared protectorates over Tonkin and Annam; in 1887 it merged Tonkin, Annam, and Cochin China with Cambodia to form a union of Indochina, to which Laos was added in 1893.
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Vietnam's recent ascent in the coffee-growing world is not its first foray in the trade. Before the Vietnam war, it was a “major exporter,” according to Scott Wilson of the Washington Post. French colonists introduced coffee to the country's central highlands region late in the 19th Century, and this proved to be a fertile are for growing coffee. Between the many years of war on its soil and the Communist government has ruled since, Vietnamese coffee exporting prowess became a thing of the past until the early 1980s, when it quietly reentered the global coffee market.
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Vietnam did not begin to emerge from international isolation until it withdrew its troops from Cambodia in 1989. Within months of the 1991 Paris Agreements, Vietnam established diplomatic and economic relations with ASEAN as well as with most of the countries of Western Europe and Northeast Asia. China reestablished full diplomatic ties with Vietnam in 1991, and the two countries continue their joint efforts to demarcate their land and sea borders, expand trade and investment ties, and build political relations.
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When you think of major coffee countries, odds are that Vietnam does not jump to your mind. Yet in recent years, Vietnam has shot up through the world’s coffee exporting ranks, now second only to Brazil in tons of coffee exported nationally. This rapid rise from utter anonymity in the coffee-producing world to its current exporting prowess has put the country at the center of a global economic controversy, as countries from Colombia to Tanzania blame Vietnam for contributing to the swell of coffee supply and plummeting prices. No small fact, considering that coffee is the world’s second-most widely traded commodity, second only to petroleum, according to TechnoServe.
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The hill tribes of Vietnam, such as the Hmong, are fewer in number today due to their collaboration with South Vietnamese and U.S. forces during the Vietnam War; many were evacuated to the United States at the end of the war. Tribal groups... respect national borders less than altitude, and move somewhat freely between Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam. They practice slash-and-burn agriculture, raise and consume pigs, and prefer glutinous (sticky) rice, which can be eaten with the fingers, to the long-grain variety preferred by lowlanders, which is always consumed in a small bowl with chopsticks. They trade the products of poppies (seeds; opium) and their renowned silverwork and embroidery for food products from the lowland areas.
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Vietnam is the country of festivities which take place all year round, especially in spring when there is little farming work. Each region has its own ritual holidays, the most important of which are agricultural rituals (such as the rituals of praying for rain, getting down to the rice field, and new rice...) and trades’s rituals (like the rituals of copper casting, forging, making fire crackers, and boat racing...). Besides, there are ... rituals dedicating to national heroes and religious and cultural services (e.g, Buddhist rituals). Ritual holidays are usually divided into two parts: the service is carried out for blesses and thanksgivings, the holiday is the cultural activities of the community consisting of many folk games and contests.
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